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Discussion: If Sons, Then Heirs
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Wilhelmina wrote: "Rebecca wrote: "Maybe it's just me,but for me there were some odd scenes. I really didn't understand the scarification piece relating to the tattoos, Lillie, Rayne. Was there some infidelity goin..."Homework assignment for me: go back and read the scarification bit. I don't remember being confused by it, but I also don't have a great memory about it (Lillie is doing a piece for a pro athlete who is hitting on her, yes?). I'm thinking now that I just saw it as a bit of a clue to who Lillie is besides just a prop for Rayne to base his angst around. I'm a bit of a tattooed lady myself, so again with the personal experiences being so informative, I may have just filled in some backstory and kept going without giving it a second thought. But, I will look at that again and see if anything in particular jumps out.
Mistinguettes wrote: "This thread has followed me into the real world: I just finished giving a presentation, and a participant came up to me afterward to ask if I'd read If Sons, Then Heirs!She remarked that my descr..."
Did the participant seem to have a favorable view of the book?
She said that she was half-way through the book and the different threads were just starting to come together for her. So, I spared her any spoilers.I also felt like Lillie was an underdeveloped character, even though she became more dimensional as the novel moved forward. I remember having some vague thoughts about tattoo (Celtic tradition) and scarification (African warrior marks) originally being physical markers of rites of passage into adulthood; and that both are now just Americanized and modernized some random forms of body mod, divorced from culture. I was hoping Carey would use Lillie to explore this theme more explicitly, and disappointed that she didn't.
I'm still interested in exploring Bobo's character. He is both the most vulnerable, and the most damaged character in the story. He also did the most damage, a harm so severe it became an inter-generational legacy inextricable from the heir property itself. Bobo is also the most misunderstood and the most redeemed character. He seems very much to me a symbol of my parents generation, passing on the historical trauma of of lynching through violence toward his own child, which he describes as "discipline" rather than an expression of his own terror and helplessness. I'm surprised that the sacrifice Bobo made to save the family land has not been mentioned -- and I presume we can discuss freely without fear of spoilers now, right?
i finished the book last night and i loved it. i must say, though, that a lot of the things people say here about its shortcomings make sense. this book could have used more: more on the land (someone in the thread says it beautifully: lands have smells and feels and all sorts of things we don't get to see), more on the characters' stories/decisions/reconciliations/redemptions, more on the secondary characters (lillie, for sure). thank you mistinguettes for all the info on heir properties. now i wish i knew a lot more.
while i was reading the thread i thought, i'm going to go back and dock a star. but nope, i'll keep the glorious five star rating, because it's a great book: the writing is gorgeous (i know some of you saw it as plain but i was blown away by it), the construction is masterful, and it kept me riveted from page one to the last page. also, just like everyone, i love rayne. i will definitely read more by the writer.
lastly, a shout out to all the posters (hi emilie!). you are amazing. i'm learning so much by all you said -- your critiques, your questions, your enthusiasm. great group.
Since Carey doesnt fill in the blanks for us on Lillie. I myself imagine some skeletons of her own in her closet so to speak. Anyonne else think she maybe have a past as well?
I just started and about 60 pages in, there are many parts that are rather confusing...I read past reviews and see I'm not alone. I hope to do some more reading tonight.
so descriptive but not connecting so far even to the characters or flow of the story per se. Some parts are obvious the author wants us to get but not connecting the dots for me thus far.
Hang in there, Adrienna! Part of what If Sons, Then Heirs is all about is how hard it is for Rayne to piece together the whole story from fragments. Readers slowly get to see how things fit together at the same rate that Rayne does. (I thought that was a marvelous construction on the author's part, and difficult to pull off!)
(hi jo!)adrienna, in the beginning, i had a little trouble because there were a lot of characters and it was difficult for me to keep track of who they were and their relationships with each other. i found the family tree very helpful. after a little while, i think it gets much more clear. also, i think the story shifts become easy to follow, because the reader is more familiar with the spaces as you keep returning to them.
i love the way she pieces the fragments together, too. it is a good reflection of trauma and traumatic memory and the dislocation in time and space it creates as well as the way the pieces become fractured and need to find a way to form them into a cohesive narrative, as rayne does (and the author does).
I thought that the fragmented memories worked particularly well in describing King. Many African American families have a patriarchal figure who looms larger than life in their families' memories. (My grandfather was this kind of a man.) We know that King is human and has faults like anyone else, but not in their memories, so he doesn't appear as a fully fleshed out character, but as an almost impossibly dominant image. We don't know the details of how he was able to accomplish what he did, but in my experience, that is how these patriarchs are often remembered. It worked well for me.Rebecca wrote: "Mina, I just picked up GLilead for another of my groups reads. I see you liked it. I have wanted to read Butler but our rural library does not have Wild Seed. :( I do have Kindred. Would you recomm..."
Rebecca, I am probably the most biased person in the world in favor of Octavia E. Butler - to me, everything she wrote is golden. Kindred is great - we had a discussion of it here a couple of years ago. Here's the link:
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...
Okay, nearly half-way and see it is fragmented memories but can easily get lost in the mix of the novel. Still having low feelings about the read, hope it changes soon; otherwise, will be marked as okay read for me. Thanks ladies. This discussion helps a little.
I will go back and read Kindred too! I wanted to get back to Octavia's series that I read a couple years back.
Thank you for the the link Mina. This will add to my experirence of Butler.
Here is my take, for what it's worth, on the scarification business. Throughout the novel, we get a fantastic sense of Rayne's personal journey to his commitment with Lillie and Khalil. How he has to reconcile his past, his abandonment issues, etc. before he can feel comfortable taking the final step with the two of them. Becoming her husband, taking on the responsibility and vulnerability of becoming his father. Lillie remains a secondary character, which I think is fine. But this does show us that she's not just patiently waiting at home for Rayne to be ready for her. She also has her journey to go on. She has to let down her own guards and become vulnerable herself, she has to trust him to do right by her and by Khalil. She doesn't just jump into the relationship at the end point and wait for Rayne to catch up to her. I don't think that anything close to infidelity happens here. But I do think that it's a symbol of the trust building between them. Rayne is jealous of the close encounters with the ballers. Unnecessarily jealous, but that rings true to what I think a lot of men would feel. Lillie bucks giving up her side business, but ultimately comes to a place where, since she doesn't need it economically anymore, she can feel comfortable giving that up for Rayne. It's a very economical way for Cary to show us the dance these two are doing on the trust/vulnerability scale that makes up a relationship.I found the discussion of the piece itself fascinating as well. mostly because it was prefaced with the discussion of the passion plays in Mexico and the Philippines. The athlete has a crucifix tattooed and accented with scarring on his back, he has a crown of thorns, but no body on the cross. I was told by a nun at some point in my education that we Catholics keep Jesus on our crucifixes because we need to remember the SACRIFICE, whereas other denominations take him off because they are emphasizing the redemption. How very Catholic. But the athlete here is using his own skin as the object of sacrifice. This could be a tiny point, but I notice that the book focuses a lot on the bodies of black men. There are lots of descriptions of the size of the Needham men. The power of King. Bobo's muted appearance in prison. The horrible things that happen to those lynched. And, there's the decoration and mutilation of the bodies of the pro athletes that Lillie works with. With all the cultural significance to Black men being able to make millions of dollars entertaining the masses with skills of their bodies, names being called off at drafts like numbers being yelled at the auction block. Well, I have to think that Cary was slipping some more food for thought into this. It just needs to be unpacked. Or maybe that's just me over-analyzing.
Mistinguettes, I think that Bobo hits on the theme of sacrifice perfectly. He is the physical embodiment of the lingering pain and trauma of what happened to King, even more than the land, in my opinion. Here he is, still spiraling from the justice he delivered. Still punishing himself for it, though the system has continued to punish him for everything else. But as Jewell astutely says, it grew into a punishment for everyone of them. Driving them away from the land and each other. I, like Mistinguettes, am interested in hearing what others thought of Bobo and his actions toward Jewell and his revenge for King.
I don't think that you over-analyzed, Rashida, I think that you nailed it. Thanks!
Well said Rashida. That gives me alot of clerification. Thank you Thank you. I also picked up on the dance of the trust and building. I thought for it was beautifully executed.
Rashida wrote: "Here is my take, for what it's worth...::sound of my head exploding::
That close reading is worth its weight in gold, Rashida! I could do a re-read just to look at how Carey treats the black male body, what is metaphorically, and even literally, inscribed upon it. I usually see this trope in writing about the oppression of women. Carey turns it on its head to tell a story about men's pain & choice/sacrifice & love. Damn fine writing!
Yes, it was particularly impressive. thanks!
I skimmed through the last 100 pages, maybe I missed something. Were they unable to get the home because of debts? I recall on the last few pages about a debt that was on the property and still had to undergo some court procedures to get the heir property.
Adrienna wrote: "I skimmed through the last 100 pages, maybe I missed something. Were they unable to get the home because of debts? I recall on the last few pages about a debt that was on the property and still had..."Adrienna: Oh, you skimmed the best part! Anyway, this is one of those places where you have to already understand how heirs property works. Heirs property is legally held by all heirs as tenants-in-common. Loss of heirs property often happens when one of those tenants-in-common takes out a loan as a lien against the collectively owned property. If the debt is not repaid, then the debtor can force something called a "partition sale". This means the property gets divided up; the fraction that the debtor owned gets sold to repay the debt and (here's the screw-black-folks-over part) the rest of the property is also divided up, to be sold to the highest bidder; all of the other co-owners have only 15 days to find each other and agree to outbid any other buyer. So, even if they had the money, unless every member of all four living generations of Needhams agreed to outbid and save the property, they would have lost the land. Proving that debt had actually already been paid in full is the only way for the Needham family property to be preserved whole.
Selma doesn't understand all of this legal stuff in the strongbox, but she knows to protect it. Bobo did grow to understand why he watched his father be burned alive, and he nearly shot his own daughter (Jewell) because he was so bent on killing the Pettifords who pursued that illegitimate claim of indebiture against the Needhams to deprive them of the land King bought. Rayne, with Jack's legal assistance and Jones' historical memory, is able to prove that some of the heirs were legitimately bought out of the property, and then assemble the remaining cousins who wanted to preserve the property intact.
I will just say that I love that both Bobo and Jones get a shot at redemption (h/t to Rashida!) from shame. By filling in the missing pieces of the family story about King's death, Beau also reveals that he is so named because he was once a beloved & protected child, perhaps the first generation of black Needhams psychologically unprepared to deal with the brutality of torture that upheld white supremacy. And Jones surely carried shame at being unable to defend King: finally revealing himself as beloved by his male partner seems connected to his ability to reveal the secret names of those who murdered King (and, IMHO, nearly killed the spirit of his son).
I just gave a lecture this week about how heirs property is about having collective responsible for care of land and the (hi)stories that take place on it. I can see that Carey needed to provide a general audience with more context to understand that cultural relationship in order to make If Sons, Then Heirs accessible. But if you know the context, her title references deep questions about what we have inherited as black people in America, and what stories we tell (or fail to tell) about that history of relationship to land. This story is stylistically different from, but no less deep and demanding than, the works of Toni Morrison.
thank you mistinguettes for a very enlightening and lovely comment.
I finished this last night, and after fighting goodreads all morning trying to get my review done, I finally managed.I enjoyed the book, and thought some of the characters were fabulous (Rayne, Selma, King, Khalil). I actually really appreciate how Carey made King so mysterious yet so real.
I have been reading up on Heirs Laws. I am familiar with the idea, because I know here (CA), one heir can force the sale of a house if the other heirs can't buy them out. And when the housing market was high, it happened. Often. But I wasn't aware of any sort of history of that sort of law, and how the poor and/or uneducated have been manipulated out of land for over 100 years. I have been reading online about the centers, etc, helping heirs. As a history lover and genealogist, this all fascinates me and horrifies me.
I found Jewell's story to be too much of a fairy tale for me, and in the end it is her story that resulted in my giving the book just 3 stars. Her not bringing Rayne back t herself when she was settled, her meeting and marrying Jack, her never going back to see Rayne. None of it rung true, and it made no sense to me how he would just accept her back into his life so easily.
Sorry I am so rambly.
Mistinguettes wrote: "Adrienna wrote: "I skimmed through the last 100 pages, maybe I missed something. Were they unable to get the home because of debts? I recall on the last few pages about a debt that was on the prope..."Yes, I read about the quick deed claims; split between the parties but sometime with so much insight and descriptive language can be rather boring and outdrawn. I was able to put the pieces together since I know a little about legal allegations with property and wasn't sure if this could be true about not being able to pay off a debt; yet I do know that someone can pay the taxes on the property and get the property or land...thought of "short sale" for some reason too. I appreciate it. so they didn't get it as I assumed.
Yes we do need to take heed to heirs property and take care of the land!
Dree wrote: "I found Jewell's story to be too much of a fairy tale for me... Her not bringing Rayne back t herself when she was settled, her meeting and marrying Jack, her never going back to see Rayne. None of it rung true, and it made no sense to me how he would just accept her back into his life so easily."Sharp observations, Dree. I do think there are lots of problems with Jewell's story-- it seems woven of some other cloth than the rest of the novel -- but still, there is a long actual and literary history of very light skinned & straight haired black folk who escaped the pain of racism by "crossing over" or passing as white. These people can't ever reclaim their families (and often don't have children) because to do so would cost them their white skin privilege. Of course, if Jewell doesn't reunite with Rayne, the Needham heirs cannot collectively protect the land, so I agree that there was a weird plot-driven aspect to their reunion. And you're right, someone with anger and abandonment issues as deep as Rayne's would not have responded to this reunion without a whole lot more turmoil.
jewell's "crossing over" is brought up in then novel when rayne asks her if she passed. clearly, cary is aware that there is a problem there. i liked that rayne is not the poster boy for childhood abandonment. in fact, he doesn't seem much angry at all. he seems loving and caring and maybe a little scared to commit but altogether a really together guy. i liked that. i like trauma portrayed realistically, and rayne must certainly have been traumatized by his mother's abandonment, but i like to think that he was brought up with lots of tenderness and care by his grandmother, and was much loved by his family. since this novel is all about the cohesion of family, the fact that rayne is a healthy man works for me.
also, he is the true her of king's charismatic leadership (rayne sounds like reign). he is a man with uncommon gifts.
Jo - love your noting the Rayne/reign homonym. Carey does great stuff with names - I wondered if we would read the "fall of Rome" when 3 of Rome & Ma Bett's 4 descendents turn out to have sold their share of the inheritance.No, Rayne is not the poster boy for childhood abandonment - Bobo already holds that title - but early in the novel, we are introduced to his rage. He manages his anger about his abandonment through boxing; then running; then physical labor; and finally, by walking the perimeter of the land, like his grandfather Bobo and his great-grandfather King, using that anger to protect and defend. So perhaps, Rayne is the image of that trauma in the process of healing, just as the family's relationship to the land is healing, but not yet healed.
I just learned this week that heir property is NOT handed down to stepchildren, like Khalil. What interesting implications this has for the future of Rayne & Lillie and the Needham family land...
Mistinguettes wrote: "He manages his anger about his abandonment through boxing; then running; then physical labor; and finally, by walking the perimeter of the land, like his grandfather Bobo and his great-grandfather King, using that anger to protect and defend...."All of which fit in so beautifully with Rashida's comments on the way that the physicality of the male body is presented in this book. Those comments and Mistinguette's comments on heir property and the relationship of African Americans to the land really enhanced my understanding of this book. Thanks to you both, and thanks to Rashida for leading this discussion.
Mistinguette, perhaps Rayne will legally adopt Khalil. The bible verse in Romans 8 from which the title comes talks about "the spirit of adoption" that acknowledges a child (a son) who then becomes an heir. Certainly Rayne and Khalil are joined in spirit; they just need to make it legal.
Awesome comment Mina, I was hoping too Rayne would get his son.
Thanks, Candy, I thought I was the only one...not a fan.
October is obviously over, so I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone for participating and giving us such a spectrum of opinions on the novel. It was exciting to see so many first time posters here! I also want to give a special thanks to Mistinguettes for giving us so much insight into the real world issues that the novel focuses on. As always, the discussion will remain open, and we welcome any further input that folks may have.
Literary Fiction by People of Color
Books mentioned in this topic
Kindred (other topics)If Sons, Then Heirs (other topics)
If Sons, Then Heirs (other topics)
Pride (other topics)
Silver Sparrow (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Octavia E. Butler (other topics)Carleen Brice (other topics)
Lorene Cary (other topics)
She remarked that my description of heirs property - a West African form of inheritance that assumes that no one person can own land, but land can own you - really put the book into perspective.